I wish first of all to extend a heartfelt word of welcome and thanks to you all: to the President of the Senate, the President of the Chamber of Deputies, the President of the Council of Ministers of the Italian Republic, the Prime Minister of Macedonia, the Ministers and Members of Government, the Ambassadors of Israel, Albania, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Holland, (and Great Britain), the illustrious guests from so many countries which are so different and so far apart from each other, to all of you who have chosen to honour the beginning of the proceedings of the second session of the 36th Radical Party Congress, an occasion not only of great importance and great satisfaction, but also a moment for decisions which are rendered dramatic by the fact that they concern the survival of our party.

I believe that you have chosen, by your presence here, to express your appreciation for the efforts made by the Radical Party to implement a project which is as ambitious as it is necessary and urgent, that is the project to constitute and set into operation the first political force in the world that is a transnational and transdivisional direct-membership party of citizens from every country.

I would like to extend a special word of welcome and thanks to Muhamed Kresevljakovic, the Mayor of Sarajevo, who should have opened the proceedings of this session but was unable to be present due to the obstinacy of the UNPROFOR and of the United Nations. Thanks to the Mayor of Sarajevo, but thanks also to the member of the Radical Party who, by his decision to join, wished to underline his profound belief in democracy and tolerance, in reciprocal respect, nonviolence and peace.

The feelings aroused in me during my stay in Sarajevo a few days ago are still very much alive: I have seen and heard the strength of those who have to suffer and bear the torment and the burden of events which not only force them to defend their own lives and the lives of their dear ones at every moment, but also strike and offend their desires, their beliefs, and their hopes.

Dear friends and comrades, the fact that this decisive Congress begins in the name and with the image of Sarajevo has a significance which we all understand.

What is happening in the former Yugoslavia could well be taken as an imaginary yardstick to measure what the transnational Radical Party of justice and nonviolence has been, what it is now, and what it may become. It is not necessary at this point to run once again through the positions and the initiatives that we have taken since 1979. I recalled them in the report to the last session of this Congress. It is enough to say one thing, not out of conceitedness, but out of a sense of truth: stage by stage, and always in advance of events, we have predicted what was about to happen, and we have pointed out and tried to put into effect the only measures that, as everyone can now see, would have avoided the precipitation of events.

What different course could things have taken if the organized political force of the Radical Party had been much more substantial? We are drawn all the more to ask ourselves this question if we consider the significance and the importance which the presence of the Party in the events in the ex-Yugoslavia has already assumed, despite the fragile scantiness of the means and the instruments at our disposal.

It was in the ambit of the Radical Party - let us say with pride - that the Croatian government reached the decision to reject the policy of the agreement between Serbia and Croatia to the detriment of Bosnia-Hercegovina: a decision to which that government, as long as it lasted, held firm despite the extremely difficult context. A fact which is recalled in his latest book by the Vice-Premier of the Croatian goverment, Tomac - a member of the Radical Party, as is Greguric, the Prime Minister at that time.

An example, a paradigm, as I was saying.

The question, once again, more than ever, and now in the terms of an ultimatum, is whether the Radical Party is to survive, whether it will have the force which it needs to carry out the tasks that it intends to and has to set for itself.

This question, and this alone, was in substance the subject of debate in the first session of this Congress. And on this question I have spoken, read and written the equivalent of hundreds and hundreds of pages in the last few years, in the reports to the meetings of Federal Council and to the first session of our Congress.

In those reports I chose to reconstruct and re-evoke the detailed chronicle of a history of attempts, which is part of us, step after step, action after action, difficulty after difficulty, millions of dollars after millions of dollars - and at times dollar after dollar - member after member, and reason after reason. Condemned to go ahead, as we have been, by the force of ideas and evidence - at least it was evidence for us, though I am still not sure whether others have perceived it as such, for the very reason that it was so blinding. And by the force of the confirmation of those ideas, of our analyses, which history is providing.

A history of attempts, I was saying. Which is part of us. But which has often pushed us to go too far compared to too many others, compared to the expected. I do not know whether the fact that there are so few of us, in Italy and in the world, is our own fault. But the fact remains, and our lack of numbers has been felt by each of us day after day, like a condemnation to be stronger than our forces and our limits. Always chained not only to humility but also to apparent modesty, to the near-clandestinity of out efforts. Fortunately identity counts in politics, but image also counts, at times in a decisive manner.

Therefore your Secretary, who is speaking now, your Treasurer, who will speak in a moment, your President, and the President of the Federal Council come here in the painful awareness that our image is obscure, almost unseen, impossible to identify and to judge. In Italy more than anywhere else, perhaps. But despite everything, the fact that we exist is taken for granted. The same is not true of the two dozen or so members of the new executive of the Radical Party, which is nonetheless taking form. It has great potential for leadership and political militancy, for initiative, for rigour in life and work, for idealistic and political enthusiasm, despite the daily frustration of expectations and hopes. It is in order to stress this fact, this unperceived and certain achievement of the Party and for the Party, that I have chosen to speak for a moment of the difficulty of the task which has united Emma Bonino, Paolo Vigevano and myself and these friends and comrades.

We say to our non-Italian friends, and also to our Italian friends, that this sign - whose precious fragility and frailty we are perfectly and anxiously aware of - is at least as extraordinary for our country as it would be for any other country, however great its tradition of tolerance and democracy.

This sign, if that is what it is, is by no means "natural" in Italy, except to the extent that "nature" is also the development of history and the affirmation of morality.

If this new humanism, this capacity to make one's own tribe, one's own faction, one's own tradition, and one's own fidelty to a national party, a reason for unity, friendship and new undertakings which go beyond borders and languages and consequently benefit from them - if this is possible here, then it is possible everywhere. In the first place for you, friends from the the ex-Yugoslavia, the ex-USSR, and the Near East. And the Italian members of the Party are here to be with you and for you, in the hope of exchange, with faith and with a love for dialogue and peace.

The majority of the 140 Italian parliamentarians who are members of the Radical Party belong to the Socialist Party, a party which, more than any other, is currently facing up to the distress of a defeat, of intolerant hatred, the price of errors which they were certainly not alone in making, which at times makes them enemies of each other, as often happens in moments when fate is cruel. We are all the more glad of and grateful for their generous presence here. To be united as Radicals with so many others, and amongst themselves, restores in them, too, the knowledge that ideals are still alive, and can and must bring them support, as they bring support to us.

Amongst us today there are also many representatives of the lay and reformist parliamentary groups: members and ministers from the Liberal Party, the Social Democratic Party, including its Secretary Carlo Vizzini, and the Republican Party. The history of Italy and of Europe means that they share the same roots as most of us, the "historic" Radicals, now a small minority in this new common Party of ours.

Those who know our country are aware that green and environmentalist forces are largely the historical and political expression of our Italian history, and are aware that Adelaide Aglietta and Francesco Rutelli, for example, and many others, have been leading Radicals for a very long time, and that the many new members are old militants of the same battles.

A group of parliamentarians from the PDS, the old Italian Communist Party, form part of today's Radical Party. Willer Bordon led the way. The democratic and cultural prestige of Massimo Salvadori and the generosity and political rigour of the other comrades allow us to hope that we won't have to wait long for the democratic, tolerant, internationalist participation of the Italian ex-Communists, whose leaders still seem to doubt their own power and ability to animate new and free bodies in which everyone can develop their own ideas, hopes and partnerships in a collaborative manner.

The presence of parliamentarians from the Partito Sardo d'Azione, the Union Valdotaine and the Liga Democratica Veneta ensures the contribution and the support of Italian democratic federalism.

This, friends and comrades, was the picture until very recently. However, in the last few days one of the most important events in the history of the Party has taken place. A number of Christian Democrat deputies, following in the wake of some of their colleagues in city and regional councils, have joined the 1993 Radical Party.

For decades our parents, and we ourselves, have opposed each other strenuously. For more than thirty years the "historic" Radicals were perhaps the only political force which refused to consider the idea of an alliance with the Christian Democrats. For this reason we were isolated and opposed. By the left and by the non-Christian parties even more than by the Christian Democrats themselves. This led to the "solitude" of three generations of "historic" Italian Radicals. Through this event the new Radical Party is genuinely new, in Italy too.

I know that Marco Pannella intends to make a speech on this subject, in particular, in a short while. Allow me, however, to say that I personally envy these Radical friends, these genuinely Radical friends, like all of us here, for the value they give and the honour they do to their own party, the Christian Democratic Party, even more than to us, by demonstrating an active force of tolerance and democracy that very few people in Italy, outside their own ranks, were able in the past, and are able now, to perceive.

To conclude my remarks on this point: can we hope that the Italian public will be immediately and adequately informed, that an example and a testimony will be given of that which perhaps is necessary for everyone? A testimony of the fact that each of these deputies and senators, from all parties and political colours, have joined the Radical Party to become shareholders, to share in the actions of the Party, because they have reached the conclusion that the transnational and transdivisional Radical Party must exist? And above all that there must be a party of political nonviolence and political liberty, two ideals which must now go closely together, as was discovered by Karl Popper, one of the rare masters of liberalism in this century.

On Monday, at the latest, we must make our decisions. We will not bargain the rule we have established for yet another hope which is doomed to become an illusion: the rule by which we live stubbornly in honourable mendicity, always trying to make wealth of poverty. Asking, above all, for friendship, fraternity and lay industriousness on one hand, and daily value and austere management on the other hand, according to rules of association which assign value - literally - to money and to the Party.

At this point I want to make an appeal to everyone present, to non-members, journalists, politicians and technicians, to anyone who may be following the Congress on Radio Radicale, to join the Radical Party here and now, or by sending a money order, and to promote the Party for a few hours, or days, in order to prevent that which seemed to have become inevitable: the end of this Radical Party.

If these enrolments come, might they not be the spark that could ignite a blaze of peace and democracy, of energy, that would allow us, armed with nonviolence, to be in time in Sarajevo or Nagorny-Karabach, in Somalia or in the Middle East, as well as in Italy? And in the UN? And in Baghdad?

In the past there were often doubts about whether members of national parties could legitimately join the Radical Party. Now, however, with exponents of many different national parties on the Federal Council of the Party alone, it is clearly difficult for such objections to be upheld.

However, it would seem necessary at this point to recall a number of characteristics of the Party which - obviously - we believe should be confirmed and reinforced in the new statute.

The Party must be considered as an instrument, a tool, noble and invaluable, but still a tool, an instrument to achieve political and social aims. It is necessary, also from a theoretical and psychological point of view, to desecrate the notion of the Party, which in the last century has become like a sort of Church, or ethnic group, or family, both in its dictatorial forms and in its European democratic forms. An institution which represents its members, who are bound by rules and strong ideological powers, so that bureaucratic management committees soon form, the objective interpreters of the "truth" of the Party itself.

Even in its liberal forms the Party is often considered as a place in which it is necessary to give up at least part of one's personal and political freedom, a sacrifice which is thought to be necessary to defend the values and the interests of the community or even of individuals.

The Radical Party, on the other hand, is an association which people join in order to strengthen their own liberty through interdependence, instead of consuming it in an individualistic vision of the individual, independent in an abstract sense.

There can therefore be no "party discipline" of any form. Only the executive organs, as long as their members act as such, are bound to carry out the mandates that the statute declares to be binding for them. However, the right of every member to change opinion, to be in apparent disagreement with decisions and choices made, should be upheld and, as far as possible, defended as a "habit" of the Party, even at the level of different, ingrained psychological reactions. The Party can under no circumstances pass judgement on the social, political and personal conduct of its members, express moral judgement on them or sanction them in any way.

One condition for membership of the Radical Party is to "purchase" the party card by paying at least the minimum fee established, to support in this way its objectives at that particular moment. Just as one buys an underground ticket or a bus ticket.

In practice, there are certain values which can be seen as prevalent characteristics of the Radical Party, independently of the practical objectives it sets itself from one year to the next. Thus the Party's symbol or logo, which evokes Ghandian nonviolence and transnationality, takes for granted certain forms of conduct and methods of expression and civil struggle as the most coherent and effective for the achievement of specific aims, and as general practice.

Plurality of association, including political association, is absolutely consistent with this vision of the duties and rights of members.

The symbol and the name of the Party cannot be used by anybody for institutional elections, either national or of any other sort, otherwise the transdivisional and transnational quality of the Party would be completely impossible, especially in countries with proportional representation.

Therefore, the Radical Party as such, and its activists as such, cannot take part in formal governments or oppositions of any kind.

These statements may seem banal or simplistic. In actual fact they are the defining features of a form of political party that has absolutely no precedents.

In its long Italian stage, however, this form of party has demonstrated great political strength; it has given rise to a an organization that has shown itself to be the most creative and the most lasting, although also the most "biodegradable". If we also consider its history in Italy, elections and legislative initiatives, social struggles and battles for civil and human rights, the limited number of members and the scantiness of resources, the ratio between cost and achievements of the Radical Party is absolutely without parallel.

The force of the methods and nonviolent techniques used has shown itself to be dramatic and risky, certainly, but also extraordinary and convincing.

It has also shown an extraordinary capacity to develop militant leaders at a social and political level, as well as in institutional positions. In Italy, the great referendum campaigns have proved capable of mobilising extremely effective individual and civil forces. The main institutional posts of the Party have always been of a "personal" rather than a "collective" nature, with the direct election of executive organs by members present at Congress. And with constant attention to the founding principles of the Anglo-Saxon form of democracy, underlining the individual's responsibility for government and the representation of areas.

In a Congress which is meant to be for the refoundation of the Party - and which has a Commission devoted to this subject, with a document of proposal and discussion which you have been given - we have thought it necessary to recall the founding principles of the Party's history and statute which have shown themselves to be of particular importance over the years.

The continual defeats of nonviolence, democracy and tolerance have always been deplored, and are still deplored. It is right that the three terms should be evoked together: there is growing awareness everywhere that there is a profound link between democracy and nonviolence.

On this point, however, intellectual clarity is necessary. There is no point complaining of the "defeat" of nonviolence until nonviolence joins the battle and measures itself in the field of political action against the instruments and the methods of violence. Once again, then, the problem is that of organization, of organizing political action.

And this is the Radical Party, what we would like the Radical Party to be: our proposal is to join together and give each other strength in the Party which, through nonviolence, creates international law and establishes real supernational institutions which are capable of guaranteeing it.

From the ex-Yugoslavia to Iraq, from Somalia to Cambodia, from the Sudan to Nagorny-Karabach, there is an evident need for new seats and new instruments of supernational law.

Who today would deny the pressing relevance of the principles and the objectives that we alone have been affirming for many years?

From the right and duty of interference to the safeguard of the rights of the individual, as a fundamental object of international politics, beyond national sovereignties; from the need to turn the great declarations of the rights of the individual into international law, to the contradictions inherent in the concept of the national state as the only existing institutional power.

The Radical Party has put forward, and continues to put forward, a large number of issues, projects and initiatives. We know them through the documents and notes that have been prepared and distributed, and will also discuss them in the various commissions.

At this point I want to mention only the issue of the environment, taking account of the contributions that will undoubtedly be given on the subject: a subject to which the Party has unfortunately not been able to devote itself up to now.

The main aim of environmental policies must be that of re-establishing the effectiveness of law, identifying the conditions for its application. An embryonic "international law on the environment" has been developing. In fact an unprecedented framework, in terms of its dimensions and the scantiness of its results, has been created, with consuetudinary rules, declarations of principles, and international or regional treaties. Who holds the reins of this complicated mosaic? Not political powers, which have so far been constantly too late, lost in a bureaucratic labyrinth of procedures, committees, programmes, and funds. There is no way out unless we can give coercive force and powers of sanction to the rules of international law.

If this is the case, and it is the case, is it not essential for the environmentalist forces to achieve the capacity for transnational struggle for law, such as that which the Radical Party intends to organize? To reject this proposal and let it drop, remaining isolated in narrow national environmental issues - does this not mean to deny the very raison d'etre of political environmentalism?

This issue, too, leads us to the fundamental matter: the vital need for the transnational Radical Party.

This is our conviction, painful though firm, as you may easily imagine. But a decision or a prediction without a theoretical alternative is rarely correct, adequate, or sufficiently profound. Therefore let us open this phase of our proceedings with some considerations which should make the closure of the Radical Party impossible, on the level of conscience and reason.

In May there were 29 Italian parliamentarians from 6 parties in the Radical Party. There are now 140 parliamentarians from 10 parties out of a total of around 1,000 deputies and senators.

The non-Italian participants in the Congress and political observers may think that this is a peculiarity of the country in which the Congress is taking place.

The fact that exponents and militants of parties which are deeply and historically opposed, one against the other, some of them traditionally parties of government, some of them parties of opposition, either Communist or liberal, left-wing, centre, or even right-wing, come to support a transnational and transdivisional political body, a profoundly political body, to make it their own, to give it their own attributes and take other attributes from it; that they have chosen to do so when the current executive of the New Party is still formed of "historic Radicals", therefore (for most of them) of politicians and militants who were until very recently their rivals, their adversaries in the national political battle, often the most convinced, the most truly Radical - this, for us, for the "historic Radicals", from activists to leaders, is an honour, a gift, an unparalleled source of obligation and rigour, of loyalty and friendship. But it is also, it seems to us, an honour for society and for politics, and

a literally moving testimony of the potential nobility of politics or of the fact that Italy can give a great and singular, perhaps even adequate, contribution, in these tragic times, to restore ancient hopes of tolerant, nonviolent, democratic, sympathetic, and combative civil cohabitation, against that which denies it and rejects it.

At the beginning of the proceedings of the first session of this Congress, at the end of April 1992, there were 3,219 non-Italian members of the Radical Party (42.8% of the total).

At the end of the year there were 7,670 non-Italian members (74.8% of the total). The number has almost doubled, and is almost triple the number of Italian members (65.6%).

These members come from 60 different countries, including all the 15 republics of the ex-Soviet Union, where there are now 5,589 members (at the end of April there were 1,270). In the Republic of Russia alone there are 2,870 members (there were 1,274), around 260 more than the number of Italian members (2,611). There are 1,107 members in the Ukraine (compared to less than 500 in April). And 1,038 members come from the regions and republics of Asia.

There are now 571 members in the republics of the ex-Yugoslavia (there were 307 at the end of April), including 385 in the Republic of Croatia (the previous figure was 241).

In Africa, In Burkina Faso alone there are 702 members (in April there were 262).

Another significant statistic, which is of particular importance, is the number of Moslem members of the Radical Party: they now account for 15% of the total, or 20% of the total if Italian members are not taken into consideration.

In total, the number of members in 1992 rose in just over eight months from 5,060 to 10,281, an increase of 51%; the number of Italian members rose by only 770 (29.5%), whilst those from other countries rose by 7,062 (219.4%).

As regards the composition of the Federal Council, which as you know is formed of parliamentarians, at the end of April there were 216 members (29 from Italy and 187 from 30 different countries).

At the end of 1992 the number of parliamentarians in the Party, and therefore in the Federal Council, had risen to 446, an increase of 100%. There are now 140 parliamentarians from Italy, an increase of 111, and 306 from 90 political parties or groups in 40 different countries, an increase of 120.

There are 134 parliamentarians from the republics of the ex-USSR, 63 from the ex-Yugoslavia, 79 from other Central European countries, and 19 from Africa.

These statistics are a clear sign of the difference between our efforts in Italy and in other countries: in Italy our efforts have been devoted almost exclusively towards politicians, whilst in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and Africa the Party has directed its efforts to the contribution and the activity of militants, partly through the publication and distribution of the newspaper "The New Party" and partly through the network of offices, which has been extended considerably in the last few months.

About a year ago, and at the first session of this Congress, we had set the material, technical, economic and organizational conditions for the realization of our projects and objectives, in terms of financial resources, at the equivalent of 30,000 Italian members.

In May we decided to delay the final decision on the future of the Radical Party, although we were aware that a qualitative, and not merely numerical, leap in the militant and political potential of the Party still seemed to be impossible. Although the number of non-Italian members increased so much during the year, the number of Italian members remained more or less the same.

Consequently, considering the situation from a merely financial point of view, we have had to go into debt in order to hold the second session of the Congress - a debt which is very close to the commercial value of our patrimony.

At the end of the Congress, unless the unexpected happens, that is unless a large number of people decide to join the Party within a few hours (and to be honest there is no sign of this happening), we will be able only to proceed to the winding-up of the Party, trying to save the party archives (and this, too, involves considerable expense), which cannot be considered as our private patrimony, but a cultural and historical patrimony of interest to everyone.

Having said that, only the essential remains to be said and recalled. We risk taking our objectives for granted, in fact, when the truth has seemed to be clear and well-known.

We have not been able to achieve our first objective, the first service that we intended to be, because we have been denied, and continue to be denied, the means to achieve it.

The same laws, the same parliamentary documents, on civil and human rights and on the defence of the environment, must be drawn up, presented, supported, and if possible approved, at the same time in the various countries of the world and in the international organizations. People must be informed, and support must be given, with the methods of nonviolence and democracy, from homes, from the streets, from the workplace, so that the institutions create laws and rights, the right to life and the life of rights.

Our parliamentarian colleagues will understand how very difficult and how very necessary it is to plan and carry out this task. It requires a lot of work, a lot of conviction, a lot of dedication, a lot of love and hope, and also a lot of money (though very little if there were many of us, and if we worked to increase our number).

It is necessary, as we have been saying for many years, to work for a reform of the UN, to refine its instruments and make it the vehicle of battles and of the mobilization of peoples, and above all of individuals. We must no longer delay the attempt to overcome the division between science and conscience, between knowledge and power, which seems to make our society schizophrenic.

To live together, firends and comrades, beyond frontiers, beyond the narrow horizons of nationalism, racism, left- and right-wing brands of fascism, intolerance and fear, means to be able to understand that which unites us in destiny, that which may be the sign of an epoch and a civilization, without renouncing government of the problems of the world through human reason, logic, and daily work. To be able always to start again and continue.

We have already had to wait more than a year for an adequate start to the campaign for the abolition of the death penalty in the world by the year 2000, setting out not only reasons and ideas, but also the necessary steps - political, institutional and legal - a possible programme of actions, and the organization of forces and cultures which may otherwise have cherished this aspiration as an eternally vain hope.

We have had to abandon the project to set up brigades of nonviolence, tolerance and peace and send them to the increasing number of difficult and tragic trouble-spots around the world, in order to back up our institutional, political and diplomatic actions, despite tha fact that we have seen the remarkable force of our actions in the ex-Yugoslavia, particularly in defence of the victims of aggression in Croatia. Without a powerful Party with tens of thousands of members and activists around the world, it is not possible to realize this project, just as it is not possible to imagine the world and the future (including the near future) if we do not manage to realize it.

We have the embryo, or little more, of the initiatives and the battles for democratic federalism, for the constitution of the Party, the Party of nonviolence, which can finally go out into the world and face even defeat, for so far we have not even suffered defeat - at a political level we have not existed, nonviolence as a form of government and political struggle has never appeared in any place around the world.

We have also identified the instruments and the actions to tackle the immense linguistic problems of the world, and the related cultural and political problems, through the adoption and growth of an international language - beginning with Esperanto and the work of its supporters, many of whom are members of the Party.

I could carry on for a long time. But we will discuss these matters during the course of the Congress, until we take our decisions, over these five difficult days. As if time were ours, as if it were not running out, as if it had not, perhaps, come to an end. We owe it to ourselves, to the friends who have come thousands of miles to be here, an act of love and intelligence. To the comrades who have worked so magnificently in the ex-USSR, in Eastern and Central Europe, and in Africa. And, let me say so with heartfelt recognition, to the 2,600 Italian members, to the 140 Italian deputies and senators, to those who work with us in the Rome headquarters, and to those who may be about to join us in the next few days and allow the survival of the Party.

The survival of the Party, as we have been saying for the last year, without even getting anywhere near it, requires the support of at least 30,000 Italian members as the technical and material condition for the existence of the Radical Party.

Is there any alternative? It is up to the Congress, and to the country in which we are meeting, to decide....